Adult and children’s book writer (and beyond) Neil Gaiman is dear to the hearts of name lovers as the creator—or at least promoter– of the name Coraline. But beyond that, the prolific and inventive Gaiman is a highly creative character namer.

Name expert Don L. F. Nilsen, professor at Arizona State University and former co-president of The American Name Society, offers his thoughts here on names in Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and we’ve added some names from other of his books as well .

Since I am a linguist who is especially interested in names, I paid particular attention to the names when I read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.